


Metamorphosis

by PrefectMoony



Category: Red White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Enemies to Lovers, Fluff and Angst, M/M, sexy times included
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:42:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23704069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrefectMoony/pseuds/PrefectMoony
Summary: “You’re working on that paper for your gender lit class?”“It’s due tomorrow morning,” Henry answers.“Haven’t you been done with it for, like, a week?” Alex asks.“Haven’t you heard that revising is the only way to get a decent paper?” Henry sniffs.“Dude, I think you’ve edited enough,” Alex snorts. Everything always coming so fucking easy to him, it’s maddening. He’s gorgeous and charming and brilliant and he doesn’t even have to try. But worst yet, it’s not even a big deal to him. Even if he weren’t all those things he never had a family name to live up to, was never expected to be something he was not. Henry’s so fumingly envious but also so goddamn lost on how it is he’s come to be.—OR_—In which Henry came to university to succeed and make a name for himself. The last thing he wanted to do was fall for the boy with such big brown eyes and a smile so bright that it makes Henry’s knees go weak. A Bday gift for my fav babe Beth!!!
Relationships: Alex Claremont-Diaz/Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor
Comments: 54
Kudos: 241





	Metamorphosis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cmere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cmere/gifts).



> Thank you so much to my loves [Ellie](https://pastelle-pvnk.tumblr.com) and [Mags](https://bibliothesoph.tumblr.com) for being complete angels and reading this for me!!
> 
> And a HUGE HUGE HUGE Happy Birthday— a day late— to the most gorgeous and amazing and talented babe in the galaxy [Beth](https://omgcmere.tumblr.com)!! I love you sweetheart!!! And I really really hope you enjoy this if even slightly XS

I am free and that is why I am lost  
-Franz Kafka 

.-

Henry wakes up the day before classes of his junior year exhausted, hung over, and to a positively shit-eating grin that Pez is boasting while he gleefully pushes open the blinds like the sadistic fuck that he is.

“You’ve become a real tosser ever since making out with my sister last Christmas,” Henry informs him bluntly, stretching out slowly while looking around for his shirt until coming to the realization that the bloke from last night must’ve taken it while on the walk of shame.

Henry really tries his damndest not to think of his ass taking that walk.

“Ah Beatrice, my sun and stars.” Pez magnanimously throws Henry an old henley from his still unpacked suitcase. Tosser status withstanding, He’s still Henry’s best friend, has been ever since freshman year when they found solace in each other being the only two Brits in this entire university— well the only ones that matter, anyhow.

“Oy, did you wake me up at this godforsaken hour just to wax poetic about my sister of all people?” Henry grouses, padding over to their joint bathroom to brush his teeth, wincing only slightly at the already raucous chatter going on in the downstairs of their frat house.

“Believe it or not Haz, dealing with your temperamental arse actually wasn’t on my list to do today,” Pez crows, standing there all put together and fresh and well-rested. Like a fucking monster. “But we’ve got that meeting with the Dean of Student Affairs about the room situation for rush week, and we’re still in that debate with Chi Phi’s president over it.”

Henry glares at the reminder, a spark of fury running down his spine, and perhaps an extra thudding to his heart, but Henry’ll studiously ignore that.

“God damn Alex Claremont-Diaz.”

“Only took you around three minutes to mention him today,” Pez perks with a knowing leer. “I reckon that’s a new record..”

“Get the fuck out, Pez.”

.-

Henry was seven years old when he realized that his family were the sort of folks that end up on magazine covers and the headlines of salacious talk shows— that his dad was a renowned movie star and his ma’s the cousin of the queen of England. Henry was fifteen years old when he first started to hate as much. When a nurse assigned to his father's hospital room leaked his death before the doctor even had time to tell them, his damn wife and kids. 

Henry was sixteen and lost at sea when Philip and the bloody queen herself sat down with him to tell him that his public presence required a certain sort of image, a discrete sort of image. An image that didn’t condone printed scarves and lingering hands with the son of a Lord who was two years ahead of him in Eton. Henry was eighteen years old when he ran off to America and learned how to keep everything hush, hush, becoming untethered to all the bull shit surrounding him. When he was accepted to Yale, and joined a fraternity and tried his damndest to emulate some douchebag wanker in the likeness of Philip. 

And you know what, it was all going as planned until Henry met the infuriatingly arrogant, and downright mesmerizing boy in the rival fraternity. The one with an upturned nose and such big brown eyes and a delicious sort of half grin when Henry challenges him on something, or keeps him on his toes. Though if Henry’s being frank, he likes it most when Alex is keeping him on his knees, when Henry’s mouth is full and Alex’s lips are preening and he’s spouting out a sort of cursed poetry with every flick of Henry’s tongue and bobbing of his head. 

Though that’s irrelevant now in the light of day when they’re on opposing sides and Alex is smirking at him from across the way with such irresistible swagger, sporting Henry’s red t-shirt that brings out the specs of golden in his almost molten eyes.

Henry hates him.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” he calls out, just because he knows it makes Henry flush.

“The room’s ours, you prick,” Henry retorts, beyond mulish.

“It’s so cute when you get all flustered, Fox.”

“I’m not joking around, Alexander! That room’s been Alpha Delta Phi’s every opening week since the bloody eighties.”

“Don’t you think it’s time for a change in venue then?” Alex asks with an owlish blink, sliding lower in his seat so that his legs spread even further. 

Oh fuck him. Fuck Alex Claremont-Diaz’s stupid cocky attitude and his stupid fucking face and so what if Henry just wants to just fuck him stupid. He can’t win just because Henry’s a weak, weak man.

“The room’s ours, Alex,” he warns lowly.

“You wanna prove it, pretty boy?”

Henry’s eyes flicker to the clock over the office door. It doesn’t technically open for another quarter of an hour, and they’ve worked with less time in even more compromising positions, so Henry doesn’t think twice when he tugs a very caught off-guard Alex into the bathroom down the hall, praying to God that there are no cameras around here.

“Woah there cowboy, didn’t get enough last night?” Alex grins, hands already down to unbutton Henry’s jeans.

“You’re fucking infuriating,” is all Henry says in answer, swatting Alex’s hands away before going down on his knees and tugging down the abhorrently orange basketball shorts Alex has on. God, if Henry actually cared he’d pull Alex aside and give him a lesson on what’s actually excusable to wear in public.

“Now why don’t you try to stay quiet for once,” Henry tells him in a hush, biting lightly on the skin of Alex’s inner thigh before kissing the spot in penance.

“Psha, you — erm, you like it when I’m loud.”

Henry doesn’t argue, isn’t in the mood to lie. Instead he takes him in slowly, tongue lapping around Alex’s tip and pushing down with precision. 

“Ah, yeah H,” Alex blurts, about two octaves higher than his normal speaking voice, as his head hits the stall, a shaking hand curled in Henry’s hair while the other one is clenched tight around his shoulder.

Henry lets one of his hands wrap around the base of Alex’s cock as the other inches to Alex’s admittedly fantastic ass, wants this done quick and sloppy and to teach Alex a lesson that he can’t just win every argument by sitting around looking like some sort of brought to life Grecian statue.

“Henry— H,” Alex comes too close to whining, tugs harder on his hair and cants his hips forward. He at least has the decency to look sheepish. “You really need to calm down or I’m,” Alex falters right then, eyes going blown when Henry’s first finger dips into his asshole, hooking in deep before Henry takes a mouth full of him again. He repeats the action another two and a half times before Alex has to frantically tap on his head in warning, and Henry gets to stand up — more than a bit smug — smirking down at a boneless Alex who’s using the stall as his only support.

“I reckon while you clean up here, I’ll go speak with the dean on the behalf of Alpha Delta Phi,” Henry tells him, swiping his mouth with the back of his hand to get rid of the pre-cum still found there.

Alex’s brows hike up as he slowly realizes what Henry has done, breathless while he spews out a fuming, “Bastard.”

“Least you got a consolation prize love,” Henry goads, kissing him full on the mouth before adjusting himself and walking back out to the office.

Alpha Delta Phi gets the room just like they have for the past half century, and Alex fucks Henry senseless for the next week. Balance is restored.

.-

Henry thinks it’s important to note that this thing he has with Alex — well, it’s not even a thing, really. They’re fuck buddies, but no. That would imply that there is some sort of camaraderie found between them, when simply there just is not. It’s a thing of convenience, truly.

The fact of the matter is that they find one another ridiculously hot, but also can’t stand a prolonged conversation without feeling the burning need to wring the others neck by the end of it. They realized as much halfway through freshman year when they had the same English lit class and Henry had to be physically restrained by Pez when Alex was arguing against Henry’s point about Hemingway being oversaturated and a blowhard.

“He’s a classic,” Alex had charged, the snow of early February in New England cascading in his dark curls and catching in his long lashes.

“He’s only adored because he’s got a dick! Why don’t you read Austen or at least a man who has something to say!” Henry had fumed.

“Let me guess, you like Metamorphosis?”

“What do you have against Kafka?” Henry gaped, only just beginning to notice the others eyeing the pair of them. And yeah, it might’ve been bewildering how they’re arguing about literaries from centuries passed in the middle of a bonfire party, but people need to learn how to mind their own fucking business.

“Well dude, if we’re speaking about blowhards, he’s definitely the king of them,” Alex had snorted loftily, taking a swig of his spiked hot chocolate.

“Don’t call me dude,” Henry had sniffed, which made Alex squint at him, more than a bit amused.

“Okay, tell me, does Prince Douche do anything for ya, pretty boy?”

That was the first night Henry grabbed Alex by the collar and showed him what it meant to be an actual blow hard. And well….they never stopped. They didn’t stop the sniping at each other or the razor-tipped barbs being volleyed around, and especially not the fucking. Never the fucking. 

But yeah, it’s not really anything, especially not the best thing. It could never be that. And not even just because his shitty family basically told him straight up that Henry could never actually come out in the public eye, Henry’s accepted that, has learned how to slink around those rules to live in some sort of happy purgatory. But the thing is, Henry’s just not a good boyfriend. He’s always too in his own head and he’s not really that attentive, and besides all that, Henry didn’t come to university to meet some bloke and live some gay romance story from the 1900s. 

Henry’s here at university to get a degree, to become someone. He’s here because his father always told him to reach for the heavens, to do something beyond himself. Henry wants to be the next great literary, wants to write something that matters, that makes a difference. Something that’ll make Beatrice laugh with no more worry eclipsing the sound, and maybe even something that’ll bring the stars back in his mother’s eyes. Henry wants to say something that’s worth being said.

Henry doesn’t want to have anything getting in the way of that, preventing him from becoming someone important. But regardless, it’s not as if Alex has ever seen Henry as more than a good lay, has made it abundantly obvious throughout the year and a half of their sleeping around. Most notably, that three month interlude when Alex began dating that boy from the student government, Liam whoever, at the end of last term. Though to be frank, Alex was always far out of Liam’s league, and the week that followed their breakup included some of the most dynamic and mind-blowing sex Henry’s ever experienced.

But that’s irrelevant.

Alex and Henry are only a last resort to one another, and it doesn’t have to mean anything more, it doesn’t have to be complicated, Henry hates it when things get complicated.

.-

Henry’s in the midst of editing his term paper on the impact that Woolf created in the discussion of gender in Orlando when he gets a text from Pez telling him to “stop being a robot.” 

Glaring, Henry ignores the text from Beatrice about David, and the email regarding alpha Delta Phi’s first charity function for this term, and the half dozen snapchat notifications from Alex alone. He instead moves to reply to Pez with a middle finger emoji before he’s accosted by a pair of hands wrapping around his eyes.

“Guess who?” an ever-amused and incredibly buoyant voice asks.

“A prick?” Henry replies in a deadpan, making it so Alex cuffs him on the back of the head.

“Say dick you douche, you’re in America now,” he commands, taking a seat besides him in the almost empty top floor of the silent library.

“Fuck off,” Henry hisses, rubbing the tender spot. “And since when are you in the library this late?”

“You mean at three in the morning?” Alex says pointedly. “Never, because I’m normal and not a school-obsessed freakazoid like you.”

Henry sticks out his tongue in retaliation because he’s too groggy to come up with anything clever. 

“And yet?”

“I’m a good person and dropped off a spare key to a brother who’s wigging out about a midterm,” Alex says, studying Henry with a peculiar amount of intensity. “Saw your pale ass haunting this place like a ghost and thought I’d bug you a little.”

“What is it?” Henry asks moodily, surprised at the lapse of silence that follows before Alex shrugs in answer.

“You’ve got some nasty circles under your eyes, white boy,” he says, not quite as crude as usual but Henry still glares in exasperation.

“So what? You got up in the middle of the night just to help a friend and criticize my looks?” Henry says with a huff, rubbing his strained eyes, only just starting to feel the exhaustion weighing heavy on his shoulders.

“I was at Nora’s place, so I was already up,” Alex says, unwittingly making it so Henry stiffens.   
It’s not unusual for them to discuss each other's conquests, but it’s different when it comes to Nora. Henry knows that she and Alex had dated for a stint freshman year before the two of them crossed paths. She’s a gorgeous and fierce computer sciences major with a minor in mathematics. There’s no way in hell that Alex isn’t still carrying a torch for her, which is fine and all, it’s not like Henry and Alex are anything beyond occasional hookups, but yeah— it still makes it so something uncomfortable is squirming right beneath the surface of his skin. And God does Henry hate it.

“How is she?” Henry asks evenly, ignores the way Alex is searing a hole into the side of his head while Henry adjusts the syntax of one of his topic sentences.

“Fine,” he says in the same detached sort of inflection. “You’re working on that paper for your gender lit class?” 

“It’s due tomorrow morning,” Henry answers.

“Haven’t you been done with it for, like, a week?” Alex asks.

“Haven’t you heard that revising is the only way to get a decent paper?” Henry sniffs.

“Dude, I think you’ve edited enough,” Alex snorts. Everything always coming so fucking easy to him, it’s maddening. He’s gorgeous and charming and brilliant and he doesn’t even have to try. But worst yet, it’s not even a big deal to him. Even if he weren’t all those things he never had a family name to live up to, was never expected to be something he was not. Henry’s so fumingly envious but also so goddamn lost on him and how it is he’s come to be.

“Alexander, is there a purpose for this ridiculous conversation?” Henry lets out a long-suffering sigh. “I really need to get back at this.”

“And what? Not sleep till tomorrow?” Alex snipes.

“If you don’t say anything worth my while in the next five seconds, I'm putting my earbuds back in and ignoring you,” Henry tells him point blank. “Five, four, three—“

Alex’s face goes a furious scarlet, jaw set, before he gets close enough that his breath skirts against Henry’s lips, and his hand finds its way to the front of his trousers.

“I’d really like it if you’d let me jerk you off right now.”

It's Henry’s turn to burn red.

“What?”

“Do I need to repeat myself?”

“We’re in public.”

“We’re in a dark library in the middle of the night and your weird ass always picks the corner surrounded by the shelves.”

“It’s always quietest,” Henry argues weakly.

“Bet we can change that,” Alex counters smugly.

Henry has already admitted that he’s a weak man, so he’s not surprised when Alex’s challenge actually works and he’s led to the most concealed corner with heated kisses and impatient grappling tugging him closer. 

“You’re unruly,” Henry whines when Alex bites down at the hinge where the column of his neck meets his shoulder.

“And you’re really sexy when you’re all focused and nibbling down on that pen,” Alex leers, pulling himself and Henry out of their pants. “Really gets a guy imagining things.”

Henry swallows down, hard.

“What sorts of things?” He asks lightly. 

“You know H,” Alex croons, gets a hand locked around each of them, knocking the breath out of Henry and making it so he’s gripping at the shelves, bracketing Alex on either side. “You get this little dent between your brows,” he leans forwards and nibbles against Henry’s neck once more. “’S the same one you get right before you cum.”

“Oh yeah?” Henry asks, pleads as he jerks into Alex’s hand, watching the moonlight dancing in his hair and tracing his strong features with a romantic sort of gentleness. Holy fuck, is he beautiful.

Okay, so Henry might’ve said that last part out loud, but he doesn’t even care because Alex’s grin goes lopsided, and he kisses the corner of Henry’s mouth and everything goes a blinding white when Alex strokes him over the edge. 

“You are really something, Henry Fox,” Alex says in a voice that’s caught between befuddlement and a sort of wondrous intrigue. Henry can’t really reply though, feels heavy and sated and like he really wants to curl up with Alex. But that’s a ridiculous notion and Henry needs to get those thoughts out his mind or else this’ll all be ruined.

“You’re like an orgasm fairy,” Henry tells him in a yawn.

“I want that for my epithet,” Alex winks, gently pushing Henry’s overstimulated cock back into his briefs and zipping him back up. “I’m calling one of the vans if you want to join, our houses are the same way,”

Henry blinks, confused. “I can’t,” He tells him with a hint of irritation. “I’ve got to finish that paper.”

Alex frowns fully now, pinning him with a one-eyed squint.

“You look like you’re about to drop dead.”

“This’s how I always look after sex,” Henry contends, unconvincing to his own ears.

“You’re gonna run yourself into your own grave if you don’t give yourself a break,” Alex tells him, near fuming.

“Then that’ll be my own doing,” Henry says, steadfast.

“That’s fucking psychotic,” Alex hisses and Henry hates how he can’t understand why this, being here, being worth something greater than just a jumble of letters and familial connection, is so important to Henry.

“’S not your life to live,” he shrugs, turning away from Alex.

“You don’t have to be the best to be worth anything, Henry,” he calls after him, cutting and cruel and careless.

Henry feels like he’s been caught out, like he can’t breathe. And how dare Alex, how dare he pretend that their situations are at all similar. Like there aren’t chasms separating them.

“Fuck you, Alexander.”

“I mean that’s all you ever want, isn’t it?”

There’s a sound like Alex kicking a chair but Henry doesn’t know for sure, refuses to turn around and check.

.-

It’s been two weeks since the library incident.

Neither of them has texted first, not even glancing in the other’s direction in the one class they share. And it’s good, it’s fine, it’s whatever. Henry’s never wanted anything more than a consistent fuck, and Alex has got dozens of options of incredibly pretty and incredibly smart and incredibly affable people just like him. He doesn’t need Henry and Henry doesn’t need him.

It’s fine.

“It doesn’t look fine, mate,” Pez tells Henry that Friday night with knit brows and a worried expression splayed out all over his face. Henry doesn’t answer in so many words, just tosses him the bird instead. “Right, good talk.”

“It’s nothing, Pez,” Henry insists, taking a drag of his joint and pretending that it helps.

“Then come to the party with us tonight, yeah? It’s Spencer’s birthday and I know he’d be a total mess if you actually tagged along to get drunk with us commoners.”

Henry glares with feeling but accepts the offer merely to prove his point that whatever happened between him and Alex means nothing.

Admittedly, that notion might’ve been thrown out the godforsaken window when the party goes into full swing and Henry finally catches sight of Alex near the beer pong table, laughing with Liam of all fucking people.

They look happy, happier than Henry’s ever seen him.

Henry feels cold all over.

He doesn’t know why he’s acting like this, doesn’t understand the reason why his stomach’s twisting into knots and his veins are spiking with a truly awful emotion and why his ribcage has cracked open, screaming at Alex, telling him to notice, to look at Henry, to see that he’s here, dammit. To see that Henry’s here and whole and has so much to give him even if it looks like the contrary.

Henry doesn’t understand any of it, so he ignores the feelings and races up stairs to his room, crossly slamming his door shut and cursing at his own stupidity. 

Like he does whenever he’s overwhelmed, Henry grabs for one of the novels lining his shelf and gets lost in the fictitious lives penned in black and white, lives far away from his reach, lives that Henry could get lost in studying and forget his own for only a little while. It’s what he did when Bea and Philip were doing grown up things and he was stuck at home all alone. What he did for days on end in the hospital room, reading to his father while he faded away bit by bit. It’s what he did to forget the fact that his own brother wants him to hide himself in all his varieties of light. 

It’s the one constant in Henry’s life and he does it now, gets lost in the words and tries to forget the throbbing to his own heart. 

It’s the first time it doesn’t work.

.-

Henry doesn’t know how much time passes when his door creaks open and he looks up to a face he put to memory long ago, even if he pretended otherwise.

“Alexander?”

“Cinderella,” he grins, slow and warm like molasses. “‘How cruel, your veins are made of ice water, and mine are boiling.’”

Henry’s heart feels like it’s just lodged into his throat, his eyes never leaving Alex’s own.

“Excuse me?”

“Wuthering Heights,” he says nonchalantly with a one-armed shrug while stepping closer into the room and pushing the door shut. “It’s your favorite book to read when you’re overwhelmed.”

Henry’s lips pinch, sitting up completely now, regarding Alex fully. “Is that right?”

“Mhmm. You like Sense and Sensibility when you’ve done well on a paper. And you have a secret copy of Little Women stuffed under your bed for whenever Bea messages you and you begin to miss her.”

“Don’t tell me you’re a stalker, Alexander,” Henry says, pretending that the butterflies swarming in his belly are just from nerves of speaking to him after so long and not from the pleasure of him knowing Henry without his evening realizing it.

“You’re not that difficult to figure out, Fox. I’ve told you: you’re just a bimbo with great legs and an accent that makes people think you know two shits about anything.” Alex flops stomach first on Henry’s bed, his head resting up against Henry’s thigh. It’s against Henry’s will when his hand moves forwards to card through Alex’s mussed curls.

“Charming, you’re truly so charming, Alexander. Do you know that?” Henry says blithely.

“The newspapers call me charismatic,” he smirks airily, making it so Henry can’t help but snort.

“Prick.”

“Says the guy who ghosted me,” Alex counters.

“The phone works both ways, love,” he says condescendingly, hating how something golden and splendid is coiling somewhere deep inside of him, merely to due with Alex’s presence.

“Pfft.” Alex gets up now so that they’re face to face, brown eyes boring into blue. “Do you know what you told me after the first night we slept together?”

Henry doesn’t have the slightest clue, so he just shrugs helplessly. “You’ve got a good mouth?”

“Shut the fuck up, you ass. I’m being serious.”

“So am I?”

“You called me a fucking distraction,” Alex hurls, like it’s been something that’s been clawing against him for a while now, itching to be spoken, clacking against his teeth and finally pouring out with vengeance. “You said you had to do well in your studies and you didn’t need a distraction.”

Henry furrows his brows, confused to the point he’s trying to make.

“And you agreed, if memory serves me well,” He says defensively.

“Yeah, because I wasn’t about to be rejected by some rich, pretty boy.”

“I hope you thought a bit more of me than that,” Henry teases, inches closer to him so that the tips of their fingers touch on the bedding.

“You also have a truly remarkable shoulder-to-waist ratio.” Alex shrugs, and Henry knows he’s trying to be a shit, but he still preens. Likes the reminder that Alex is just as much into him as he is Alex.

“I don’t see what’s wrong here.”

Alex shoves at Henry’s forearm, hard.

“The problem, you prick, is that for some fucked-up reason I was actually into you, like a lot.”

Henry’s head swings up from where it was lazily gazing at Alex’s lips, waiting for a chance to kiss them.

“Like truly into me? Like you want to go steady and out on dates and spend the night in my bed?”

“I mean, whatever the non-old man sounding equivalent of that is,” Alex tacitly agrees, head cocked like he’s trying to parse out Henry’s own feelings.

And for his part, Henry can’t believe what he’s hearing, what Alex’s saying, what he’s confirming. This must be a dream, a figment of Henry’s imagination. Stuff like this doesn’t happen to him, they happen to the protagonists of his favorite stories, not real life. 

“Wh—What? Why?”

“Dude, that’s what I’ve been asking myself for the past year and a half,” Alex gripes, rocking back; Jesus fuck, he’s nervous. He’s just admitted all his feelings like that and he’s waiting for Henry to either confirm or shoot him down. Henry’s the one with the upper hand here, and it’s awful.

Holy fuck.

“You—you said you liked me,” Henry says tentatively. “But now, do you—erm, ahem,” Henry coughs awkwardly, and Alex is gracious enough to answer the unspoken query.

“I didn’t break up with Liam last semester because he didn’t root for the Cowboys, dumbass.”

“Oh,” Henry blinks, befuddled, which makes Alex roll his head back so fiercely that Henry’s afraid he might strain something.

“I broke up with him because I’ve got this massive, irrecoverable, disgusting thing for this blonde prick. A douche who puts too much on his shoulders and tries to prove something to someone who isn’t even here, and who is so goddamn dense that I have to spell my feelings out to him like he’s actually a frat bro instead of just pretending to be.”

Henry feels himself going scarlet, feels it how his heart blossoms with wanting, unrestrained and painful in its ferocity.

“But Nora?”

Alex’s face goes blank, and then a sickly green color. “Dude, why are you bringing my sister’s girlfriend into this?”

“Wait—You’re not? I thought you still had a, erm—a thing for her?”

“She’s not the one I just gave a Twilight-level cringe speech to, is she?” Alex harrumphs, crossing his arms and scowling at a point over Henry’s shoulder.

“So, you really like me?” Henry asks hopefully.

“I swear to God, Fox: if you don’t tell me how you feel in the next five seconds I’m going to—“

Alex stops speaking right then, is interrupted by Henry’s slamming lips and desperate palming and long limbs tangling into one another.

“You’re a monster,” Alex pants once Henry’s lips finally unlatch from his and Henry’s almost tearing off his shirt.

“I can’t believe you actually want this,” Henry says in contrary. “I’m a mess, you do realize as much, don’t you?”

Alex looks endeared when he smiles, shrugging helplessly. “I like messes.”

Henry can’t help the laugh he lets out, relishes when Alex finally gets a good hold of him and lays him back so that they’re pressed skin to skin and he’s spouting out nonsense about Henry’s eyes and mouth and dick, each point punctuated with a kiss across Henry’s protruding collarbone, helps him shed off the last of his clothing.

“You’re so fucking gorgeous,”Alex marvels, making Henry’s cheeks redden and causing him to hide it by kissing along Alex’s jaw. 

“I’ve liked you for so long,” Henry can admit in the blanket of night, is soft when he slants their lips back up against each other, back arching when he feels Alex pressing inside of him, stretching him out. He’s always so gentle with Henry, even before this was supposed to mean anything. But, holy fuck, who’s he kidding––this has always meant something, even when Henry pretended otherwise.

“You’re the most stubborn fuck I’ve ever met,” Alex tells him, making it sound like an exaltation. “You always had your mind set, know exactly where you’re gonna go.” 

Henry groans when Alex puts in the second slicked up finger, followed quickly by the third.

“Ah-Alex, ‘Lex, please.” 

“You’re so smart and beautiful, and you have such a good heart.” Alex just keeps on talking, only stopping occasionally to pepper a kiss on a spot around Henry’s face. 

Henry feels his eyes prickle with wetness, knows that it’s a combination of feeling so much and feeling so exposed, so open in Alex’s eyes. 

“You’re amazing, sweetheart,” Alex whispers, kisses the tears away before he lines up and thrusts into him, something this side of painful with the first couple canting of the hips, until he hits that miraculous point that makes Henry’s insides go feral and something ferocious unfurl within him.

“Alexander, please. Please, love, please,” Henry pleads, hands scratching against Alex’s back and head tossed with yearning.

“You’re so good, so perfect, Henry,” Alex says like an oath, pushing deeper and harder into him, biting down on Henry and making him shout as he cants his hips up to meet each of Alex’s own.

Alex is spouting out a new round of praises towards Henry’s brilliance and butt and beauty and Henry can hardly handle it, feels the white streaks landing on his belly right before Alex begins speeding up in a graceless round of thrusts, finishing with a blown out expression, slowly pulling out and tossing the condom to the trash bin beside the bed.

He collapses half on top of Henry but he doesn’t mind, moves slightly so that the blanket is covering the both of them and kisses Alex’s shoulder tenderly. 

“I think I might love you,” he whispers, snuggling closer to Alex.

“Good,” he yawns, slings an arm around Henry’s torso and curves against him. “Makes us even.”

.-

Next week Henry calls Philip and tells him to kiss his ass, and that he doesn’t have to prove shit to anyone.

“You’re sexy when you’re mad,” Alex tells Henry when he hangs up.

“You always think I’m sexy,” Henry sniffs loftily.

“Guilty as charged.” Alex shrugs, pulls up to kiss him senseless once more, making everything go delirious.

**Author's Note:**

> I really hope you liked this Beth darling!!
> 
> ANd thank you for whoever else read this!! It would mean the galaxy and stars to me if you would leave a comment letting me know what you thought!!!
> 
> Please come chat with me on [Tumblr](http://LiterallyLen.tumblr.com)  
> !!!  
> With Love  
> ~Len


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